


Shikara

by lightningwaltz



Category: Haider
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-25
Updated: 2015-04-25
Packaged: 2018-03-25 16:07:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3816592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightningwaltz/pseuds/lightningwaltz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>When Arshia drives away, her wheels won’t leave any tracks on the road. It will be like she was never here.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shikara

**Author's Note:**

  * For [toujours_nigel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/gifts).



When a man is stolen from Srinagar, few approach the bereaved, few will offer their sympathies. Not in those first moments of agony, when you slide to the floor, cover your face, and let out a sob that horseshoes into something like hysterical laughter. Nowadays, if this happens to you, people leave you in peace. Like you’re praying, even if you're facing the wrong direction.

Arshia thinks this comes from a sense of normalcy, not from selfishness. Everyone has lost someone. If they haven’t lost someone, they know someone who has. The men who have been taken are like holes and tears in an old piece of clothing no one wants to throw away. Just something that happens. Something to patch over, and sigh over how bright the fabric used to be, how it made you feel glorious when it was newly purchased, newly worn. It happens every day, somewhere in this valley, this kind of incalculable loss. You pick up, you move on. You do not become a demon feeding on someone’s sorrow. That’s just selfish

Even Arshia maintains this code when the Meers’ home is burned. She sees Ghazala's red eyes, red face, and she sees the rows of women standing standing beside her, like soldiers. And Arshia watches as her father leads Haider’s mother away once it’s all over. 

_He cares. Always has_ , she thinks. _He'll try to do right by them now._

Privately, many vow to check up on Ghazala later. But Arshia will be the only one who does.

*

She remembers that things had not always been this way. She can never forget, even though it seems like something out of a parable now. 

When she’d been a little girl and a stray bullet had shattered the window of her home and stolen her mother, people had been quick to pat her on the head. There tears had already fallen on their hands. They’d called her brave and asked if she needed anything. But Arshia had also seen how her brother and father needed comfort so much more than her. Of course they would. They’d known _maaji_ so much longer, and their grief was likewise extended. So she’d watched them carefully, anticipated their wants, and put on her sturdiest smile. Sturdy as the wood in her home's foundation. 

This resolve lasted until the day she’d started screaming in class. It would go down in silent family lore as the day she finally mourned her mother, but the reality would be- like many things- a bit more complicated.

She'd been etching out words and numbers in whispering graphite. Her eyes had landed on the two empty chairs where her Pandit friends had once sat. The twins, Mrinali and Barkha. The three of them had grown up together like vines, in and out of each other's homes. Recently they'd become obsessed with ghost stories, and had taken to staring at the adults' feet, hoping to to find a pair that were turned backwards. All of them had been privately unsure what they'd do if they ever, actually, uncovered a _bhoot_ , but no one had shared this fear. The twins' parents sold flowers on a _shikara_ , and sometimes Arhia was permitted to come aboard. She'd often fallen asleep on it, lulled into a nap by the waves lapping against the boat, cushioned by the scents of deodara and thick pollen.

Then she'd come to school and they weren't there. Day after day, they weren't there. It had been explained to Arshia, but there were cold facts and there were hopeful expectations. The latter died, on this particular day. For no particular reason. They were gone, and she wouldn't see them again even if they were alive. So she stared and stared at those empty seats, and then she set her pencil down on her desk, in the depression for abandoned writing implements. That’s when she started to howl. She screamed and screamed, banging her feet against the floor, certain she was becoming younger with each angry gasp. 

Mrs. Meer had been the one to sit beside her when they’d call in her father. They all sat hunched over the teacher's desk, like the adults were trees trying to descend to Arshia's level. Her lungs burned so hard she imagined her chest melting away. If she also disappeared, how would anyone explain it? 

“I don’t know how this could have happened.” Her father said that the day _maaji_ had died, too. “I’m sorry. She never does this.” 

Mrs. Meer had a temper and she demanded perfect answers and perfect handwriting. The students often feared her until they realized they admired her. But in this moment she showed Arshia a kind of tenderness she’d later learn was rarely extended to her son of flesh and blood. 

“Your daughter is mourning. That’s normal.” 

"Normal? This?" Arshia father was looking at her, and Arshia's face was turned towards his. However, her eyes followed Mrs. Meer. And that's when she saw it; her teacher's gaze landing on each of the desks where the Pandit students used to sit. Where Mrinali and Barkha used to sit. 

“Is this first time she’s cried about it?” Mrs. Meers asked, now. 

Her father started to say something, and then he stopped. 

“Is it Arshee? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you cry over her.” 

“Am I in trouble?” she whispered, too exhausted to worry over sounding babyish. 

“No.” He patted her on the hand and, already, his eyes were far away. Planning something. “Do I need to take her to … someone?” He asks Mrs. Meer. 

“I can’t tell you what to do with your family. But you have the money. If that's what you decide to do.” 

Arshia twisted her fingers together. Over and under and over again. She thought that the conversation was passing her by. Adults did this a lot. Entire topics that flowed over her head, like the top of a river. And there was Liqayat back at home, who thought she was dumber than she was. All because he had been on the planet longer, and had picked up a few big words she didn’t know yet. Big deal. He was the one who always messed up on the typewriter, not her. 

“Arshia, dear?” She looked up, and remembered the posture her teacher liked. She adopted it now. 

“Yes, Mrs. Meer?" 

“There’s no point in holding back. The things you feel will come out no matter how hard you try to keep them down. Sometimes they come back in twisted ways, too.” 

It was so unlike the comfort or praise other adults have shown her that Arshia stared, dumbstruck. She said nothing, even at her father’s prompting. But this was the one time Mrs. Meer didn’t seem to demand an answer. 

The words ensnared her heart, twisting around it, like the weeds that were starting to edge out her mother’s blossoms (Arshia watering them seemed to make them brown over faster, so she decided to let them die and fertilize the soil. It seemed to her a minor miracle that dead things could fortify the living) She still heard her teacher's voice when her father took her to a tea shop. The chai was milky, and the scent of cardamom and cloves smelled like a home that no longer existed. She swallowed it down, even though the tea was much too hot on her tongue. All the while her father chattered about his plans. How their city was unsafe, but he would do what he could to make sure the thing that happened to her mother never happened to another woman, man, or child. Not here, not in Kashmir. 

She must have heard him, because it was something she believed in even after she stopped believing in other city politicians. Even when the disappearances and deaths kept happening. Maybe she had this faith because he took her to a "someone" who turned out to be a thing called a "psychologist." And this woman from the south, in her neat outfit, and soothing voice, taught Arshia how to cry again. How to cry effectively, and not go away inside. She taught her how to cope when a bomb detonated near Liqayat's bus stop. She helped her cope again when Liqayat came home from school, sometimes, and talked about how they share the same space as a prisoner detention center. How he heard screams at night, and they weren't from ghosts. Arshia would remember these sessions when she reported on the assaults of women, of parents whose sons were taken in the night, and the soldiers who got away with anything and everything. 

All of this wouldcome later. All of those events, and all those voices. In that afternoon, when her father was the only one talking, Mrs. Meer would be the only voice in Arshia's head. 

*

When your house burns down, and the state declares it right and good, where do you go after? 

There’s no singular answer. But the sun is high overhead and Ghazala Meer is still sitting on the bench outside Pervez Lone’s office. Arshia has suspected something like this. Often, these halls are lined with people, penitent, hopeful, demanding. Individuals who care about something or someone, even when the collective does not.

Today, though, no one wants the eye of the state to turn to them. Not when the whole valley seems to reek of ash and gasoline. So, today, it's just Ghazala.

“Auntie-ji?” Arshia knows it’s easy to turn away, but it’s also painful to not aid someone so clearly in pain. For some reason she thinks of a double helix shape; two strands of possibilities twisting around each other, shaping each other, and never touching in the illustrations. It's like there are always at least two impulses that duel within her. “Has my father not seen you yet?” 

The gears of bureaucracy grind slow here, and Arshia can’t discount the possibility.

Ghazala looks up from where her fingers rest on her knees. “Oh, no. He wrote down my… _information_ a while ago.” 

The both fall silent. Ghazala’s whole body seems to hum like an instrument being tuned. 

“So you’re free to go?” Arshia is about to ask the next, logical question _(why haven’t you gone home?_ ), but then she remembers the heat in the air, so hot she thought her own veil would turn to ashes, and then her hair. 

Ghazala stands, and Arshia remembers that she’s a rather tall woman. “Yes… I guess the whole world has to be my home, now.” 

“Is there anyone to drive you to… where you need to be?” Too late, Arshia remembers that Ghazala has never cared for polite euphemisms. She had rarely tolerated them in her students, instead lightly teasing them until they arrived at the heart of the matter. 

She’s about to apologize now, but then she notices Ghazala’s stare that pierces the air between them like headlights. She’d smiled darkly, when talking about the world being her home, and that smile hasn't budged a single millimeter. She’s like a paused VHS tapes. Arshia catches herself staring, waiting for the ripples that sometimes cascade over those stilled images, making perfectly made up heroines look rather ghoulish.

“Where do you want to live in the mean time?” Arshia tries. “I can drive you there.” 

That makes Ghazala return from where she’s hidden herself away. Like a kite that flew free from one’s hand, but fell back to the earth in the same backyard.

“You have a car?” Ghazala asks, even though that seems so irrelevant now. Arshia’s rarely driven it out of the city. It’s something she thinks about, though. If a poster for a movie promises the visuals of a car trip, she will go to the cinemas alone, just for the possibility of seeing someone travel without ever dealing with a checkpoint.

“Yes, Aunti-ji. I have a car.”

“Did you buy it with your own money?” 

“Yes, Auntie-ji.” 

“Well done,” Ghazala says, and seems to mean it. She has no bag beside her. No purse. Even though she probably wishes for straps to wring between her hands. It’s probably twisted and burnt, miles away. “It’s nice of you to offer to drive me. Can you take me to… Haider’s uncle?” 

Oh, yes, Khurram. He’d recently been interviewed on some British news program, sharing his hopes for Kashmir. The station had called his house a “manor” which, for Arshia, conjures up images of stuffy houses, and people wearing poofy gowns. People talking about "entertaining" and handing out calling cards when they see you out. Still, it was an impressive building, and a logical choice. Ghazala would not want for space or comfort. 

Haider thinks of his uncle as a busybody, but Arshia is quick to point out that he hadn’t complained when Khurram was the one to buy him his first pack of cigarettes.

And there had been that week Arshia and Haider went and saw _Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak_ and become convinced their families would put a stop to their (not so) clandestine romance. So they had chosen to end things- wasn't that safer?- and, in the process, became driven to distraction by misery. Arshia had kept it in, but Haider had not. Khurram had been the one to take them aside. Lecture them for being fools, for tossing aside something rare and valuable. 

As an adult, Arshia has come to believe Ghazala must have told Khurram to intervene. And she _knows_ Haider hadn’t complained about their reunion. She thinks he might have even thanked Khurram.

In the present moment, Ghazala settles herself into the passenger seat, and her stare lands everywhere there is movement. First on Arshia’s hander as they work on the clutch. Then on her hands again as they turn the steering wheel. Later still they seem to follow every pedestrian. It’s not difficult. There aren’t many of them today. Amazingly, there are some tourists on the side of the road, and their faces look afraid but their stances are fearless. She's talked to them a few days ago. They'd heard that Jesus had come here during his 'missing years' and now they wanted to investigate for themselves.

“Auntie, may I ask a question?” Their eyes meet in the rearview mirror and Arshia sees now, how red they are. It makes her pupils look much darker. Like secrets could slide into them, and be crushed. Just like matter that drifts into a black hole light years away. So many songs speak of mysteries hiding in a womens _kajal?, but, without makeup, this particular woman is even harder to touch._

Ghazala tilts her head from side-side-side. _Go ahead. There’s not much that can hurt me._

“How did Haider take the news?” 

“He hasn’t yet.” 

Arshia can’t even gasp. “My father has a phone, and he likes you. If we turn back, you could-” 

Ghazala brushes that aside, her hand flicking the air. “Most of the time, if I call my son, he hangs up the second he hears my voice. He only answers if he’s in an exceptionally good mood.” 

“Ah…” The first time she’d met Haider, they’d both been gangly teens. Despite that, he’d had the kind of unwelcoming beauty she’d only associated with a former teacher of hers. Even before being told, she knew she had met Mrs. Meer's son. She can’t remember how, or in what context, she just remembered that it had ended with Ghazala coming to fetch him, and Haider kicking pebbles as they left. Turning back to look at Arshia once or twice.

“So you see my problem. If he hangs up, who knows how many times I’ll have to call before he’ll answer? And knowing him he’ll ask me why I didn’t tell him sooner. And god forbid I ruin one of his rare good moods." Ghazala is joking. And she's not joking.

“He loves you." How trite, how _filmi_. How true, in all its unfortunate glory. 

Ghazala turns her head away, tapping her fingers on the window. Beyond the glass, the clouds have been burnt away. Arshia half expects her fingers to come away blue, like she’d been finger painting.

“You saw my son, didn’t you? That time you went south?” 

On any other day, Arshia would lie. On any other day she’d smile prettily, and lead her companion down roads that lead nowhere.

“Yes. I left New Delhi earlier, and kind of… lost my mind. I bought tickets to Aligarh and I ended up visiting him.” 

Others might hone in on the fact of her being a woman traveling alone. _Are you stupid_. Others would focus on how she spent the night in a city with a man who was not her husband. _You must be stupid._

Ghazala leaps over it. All those simmering questions are irrelevant now. “How does he live? I’ve only heard four words from him in as many years.” 

She knows the bargain Ghazala has made. It’s one many parents have made, in order to save their children. _Your hatred is a price I will pay for your soul._ So she'd made a bargain stabbed through with an un-fired bullet. 

So Arshia tells Ghazala some of the truth. Haider lives in a neighborhood where children draw on the streets in chalk, often well into the dusk hours. It's a neighborhood where these same children do not memorize the names of guns, or daydream about owning their own some day. Where sisters can be sure their brothers will come back when they set foot aside. She tells her about the textbooks on his kitchen tables, and the laundry drying from his windows (or getting rained on because he forgot to bring it in.) She mentions the music his neighbors played at all hours, and how the apartment complex had seethed with fighting and laughter and life.

She doesn’t tell Ghazala that his landlord had bragged of his own magnanimity and trust when Haider was out of earshot. Most people weren’t willing to take on Kashmiri refugees, after all. At the time, Arshia had just told the man that Haider wasn’t a refugee. He had a house waiting for him. The man had just laughed at her like she’d said something very cute. 

Arshia doesn’t tell Ghazala about the newpapers Haider keeps next to his books. All of them had headlines that shrieked about the Kashmir question.

She doesn’t tell Ghazala any of this, because the question had been _how does he live?_

And Haider is alive.

*

There are other details Arshia would always keep to herself, about that trip. Things that belonged to her, and to Haider. Inconsequential things but things that are her own 

Fog entombed the train station in Aligarh. Fog thick as gun smoke, as undeniable as a punch. Haider emerged into Arshia’s vision like a resurfacing memory. Unable to resist she reached out, holding his collar between her thumb and index finger. The cloth was rough to the touch, faded from many times through the wash. 

Arshia knew passers-by must have thought that they were married. 

“Hello,” Haider said, seeming a bit surprised to find himself awake, alert. Alive. The autorickshaws honked and whirred all around them, there’s something distant about their discord. Like explosions heard underwater. “You made it.” 

He sounded amazed by that, too. 

She had a backpack clenched between sweaty fingers. She dropped it to the floor, and pulled Haider into a very matrimonial-looking hug. This was the furthest she’d ever traveled, and this was made manifest in every place her jostled bones had rubbed together on that bumpy bus. She felt it in the tension headache from her tight, hidden braid. Her father bought her new shoes for this journey, and they’d rubbed blisters into her toes. And she's full of raucous, contemplative energy. Maybe because, during this trip, there had been no mandatory stops. In this part of the subcontinent, the checkpoints had vanished from the landscape entirely. It continuously reminded her of the time she tripped on a snow covered hill and somersaulted over and over until she hit the ground. The fall had been terrifying, and when she landed she had laughed to hide her shock. 

And so she thought she understood Haider’s almost humbled state. It was the reverse image of her insubstantial joy. Nothing about this came from true peace. Being free from it all is not freedom. Not if you take the war, crush it small, and meld it to your soul. After a week in Delhi, she’d come to see how you had to build yourself up again, out here. You took bits and pieces of yourself, and remodeled yourself to fit the life experiences of those around you. 

But, yes. She had made it. 

“It was a close thing.” They should have moved apart, but she had always liked the solid slope to his shoulder. She liked how her chin could rest on it. He could just deal with it until he chose to pull back. And he did. 

“What? How so?” 

“There was a point I thought I would die from boredom.” 

Haider laughed. "No books?"

"I forgot." More like Liqayat had picked a fight while she'd been packing.

Haider took her backpack and hauled it over his shoulder, he kept stealing smiling glances at her. This was a happiness that was much more real. 

Soon, she crawled onto the back of Haider’s motorcycle, wrapping her arms around his waist. She’d touched him like this before, usually without clothes on, her hands wandering lower and lower still. As they rode towards his apartment, they dodged pedestrians of all ages and genders. Prostitutes, vendors, house wives, business men, students. Just a city, alive at night. They zoomed past a gaggle of teenage boys. Some of them had voices that cracked between high and low registers. When they made finger guns and went _dishoom dishoom_ , Arshia expected police offers to swarm down on all of them. She was still waiting, long after they turned onto another lane. 

There were many wild dogs roaming the streets, and they were almost invisible in dark. The motorcycle lights caught the golden gleam in their eyes, and somehow this calmed Arshia down. Something was always watching, even this far from home. Aligarh was called the City of Locks, but so many doors were open that night. 

Once they were in his room, Arshia and Haider were even less inclined to talk. She just wanted to lie down, and she wanted him to join her on the bed. She wanted the sensation of naked skin gliding over naked skin, and the way Haider has always touched her so carefully, so meticulously, no matter what went on in his mind. They whispered together in the cadences from home, home, home before, during, and after. 

Whenthey were through, she lay awake for a while. After sex, she rarely experienced the pull to sleep deeply, Usually, it just left her scoured and strangely clean. Like she understood the world a bit better. Like she could see all the ways things fit together, and how they made the world whole. 

So she crept from Haider’s bed, pulled on his shirt, and roamed his tiny apartment. It didn’t take long. He had an equally tiny television, which she turned on and flipped through until she found the BBC. Some people went to Bollywood films to escape, but Arshia generally went to international news these days. 

A huge house was burning on the screen, so stark and bright she expected tendrils of smoke to reach out from her from the screen. A second later she though someone was reporting on Kashmir. Then she looked closer and noticed the desert surrounding it. The scrubby trees, and yellowish rocks. At some point, during her long journey, that compound in America had started burning. By now the story- this story she had been following for weeks, for some reason- was over. Everyone inside is dead. The news anchors kept their calm. Arshia put her hand over her mouth, and began chewing on her thumbnail when she heard how many children died. 

“This looks cheerful.” Haider had woken up, but she hadn't really tried to be quiet. He lay down next to her, put his head in her lap, and closed his eyes. His face shone blue from the light of the television. 

"It's just that... I can't believe it ended this way. So suddenly." 

"You care about everyone, don't you Arshee? Even if they have no relation to you." 

Could that be all this was? She searched her soul, but only found fear and pettiness and disappointment in herself. But at least her best friend was sleeping against her legs. At least she got to massage his scalp, and listen to him breathing. All they ever did was talk on the phone. For once, it was nice to share air and silence. Variety was a welcome thing. 

She wouldn't know, until several hours had passed on the train, that Haider had sneaked one of his old textbooks into her bag. It was a copy of the Iliad, and Haider's notes ran rampant along the margins. He seemed to have a particular affinity to the passages about Hecube, for some reason. They were underlined in pen, and sometimes blazing bright from highlighters. He'd also circled one of the few passages that could be considered love poetry, in ink that seemed a bit more fresh. 

Arshia didn't know what to make of it, but she'd read those portions over and over anyway. 

*

They’re close to Khurram’s house when Ghazala reaches out and touches Arshia on the arm.

“I’m sorry you didn’t get that job in New Delhi.” 

Oh, yes. Few people had commented on it. At least not to her face. If anything, it had been expected. She had no connections outside Kashmir. There was no way that news station would take her on. It was a miracle she had been granted an interview.

“Oh. That.”

“That.”

“They offered me the job.” Arshia has never said this out loud. Not even to Haider. “I turned them down.” 

“Why?” The outburst almost roars out of Ghazala. Arshia has forgotten how she can yell. She wonders, for the first time, what happens to that gun Ghazala had so famously pointed at her own head. “Arshia, that was… You were almost _out_. Arshia, _why_?”

“This is where I’m _from._ I got there and I realized I could do more good here by reporting what’s happening to us. Even if no one outside Kashmir reads it. If I got stuck in Delhi, I would just be broadcasting what people want us to believe. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t.” They’ve had to stop again, as some students cross the street. The girls have red ribbons in their hair, but they march like troops heading to a meaningless battle. During Arshia’s tirade, her hand actually slapped against the steering wheeling. It sends out a weak honk, and the children begin to run. That's enough to give way to contrition.

“I’m sorry,” Arshia whispers. “You don’t need someone yelling at you today.” 

“You sound like him.” It’s that same stare from the day Arshia started screaming. There's no doubt who Ghazala means. “I’m so, so sorry you don’t have a mother to make sure you get out.” 

It’s cruel and kind all at once. Just like how Haider describes her. The conversation withers and dies as easily as fruit in a drought. Khurram's house comes into view, and he’s standing outside his walls, like an effigy. Like he’s been waiting for Ghazala all day. Like he's been waiting for her for his whole life.

All at once, Arshia realizes this might have been a mistake.

“Thank you, princess,” he says, when she rolls down her window and explains the situation. He means it, but he soon turns away. He's looking for Ghazala even though she's right there.

Arshia unlocks her car, and then reaches for Ghazala's wrist.

"Tell him," she says, and she means so many things.

"You care about us so much, don't you?" Ghazala says, like they've never earned it. Like Arshia hasn't been a permanent fixture in her home. Like caring is something people did on distant planets.

"I _know_ you care about him."

Ghazala lowers her eyes, thanks her, and steps out of the car.

When Arshia drives away, her wheels won’t leave any tracks on the road. It will be like she was never here. Someday she'll write about all of this. Isn't that why she came back? After Dr. Meer is found perhaps. After the celebration or the funeral. She'll write it all.

**Author's Note:**

> I took my cue from Vishal Bhardawaj, and had fun taking and re-purposing bits and pieces of Hamlet (that didn't seem to show up in the movie) for this fic. 
> 
> Haider's script writer, Basharat Peer, has a memoir about his childhood in Kashmir. It's called Curfewed Night, and it was a strong, strong influence on this fic as well.


End file.
